Infants, children and adult incontinent individuals wear disposable personal care absorbent articles such as diapers, training pants, and incontinent briefs, to receive and contain discharged urine and excrement. Disposable personal care absorbent articles such as diapers, training pants, and incontinent briefs, are well known in the art. These disposable personal care absorbent articles can function both to retain the discharged materials and to isolate those materials from the body of the wearer as well as from the garments, clothing and bedding, of the wearer. Generally, such disposable personal care absorbent articles collect and retain urine and excrement including fecal material and any other waste matter discharged from the alimentary canal and deposited thereon by the wearer.
Typical incontinence pads are attached to an inner surface of a garment and fit between legs of a user. Incontinence pads often include a topsheet which faces towards and contacts the body of the wearer and a liquid impervious backsheet that is positioned opposite the topsheet. Between the topsheet and the backsheet is an absorbent core. A typical absorbent core includes a relatively thick absorbent structure of a combination of fibrous material such as comminuted wood pulp allowing the topsheet to be drained of liquid that contacts it so that the topsheet may acquire and distribute more liquids. The absorbent core absorbs urine or other liquids and transfers these liquids to a storage area keeping the wearer dry even when the disposable diaper or incontinence pad is removed from the wearer.
Typically, to increase capacity of the absorbent core, the dry volume of the absorbent structure of the absorbent core is increased. A caliper of an absorbent structure may be up to 80 percent of a total dry caliper of the incontinence pad.
It is often desirable to provide incontinence pads having increased capacity to absorb and retain urine and other bodily exudates. In order to increase capacity of the incontinence pads, the dry volume including the thickness of the absorbent core is typically increased. Such an increase in thickness can result in a decrease in a wearer's comfort, thereby inducing the wearer to select a pad that may not possess the absorbency necessary to meet the wearer's needs.